5:15 pm

It's been a sad weekend here at Possum Cough. We had to find a new home for Dixie. She got more aggressive and "wild" and it just didn't work out. We will be praying that God brings us just the right dog to be Peepaw's little companion.

Yesterday, we decided to get away for a few hours and so we headed toward Sevierville and stopped in at the Smoky Mountain Knife Works store. Man...is it ever huge! It was very similar to Bass Pro Shop but instead of fishing and sporting stuff, it was mostly all varieties of knives and lots of kitchen gadgets, which I loved. I tried talking Peepaw into buying a neat sword, but he decided against it. They even had replicas of the ones from Lord of the Rings. We heard some folks saying they were going to look at "the bears" so we hurriedly followed them only to find two dummy bears playing guitars and singing. At least we didn't find real bears down in a pit, looking up at us and hoping we would drop a morsel of food down to them. There is a souvenier shop in Pigeon Forge that has one of those "bear pits" and I was going to post a picture of it, but it's just too sad. We also went to a Lodge Cast Iron store because I needed some little pot holder thingys to put on the handles of my skillets because they get so hot. I'm glad I threw out my non-stick cookware and started just using cast iron and stainless steel. It's a little bit of a challenge to learn how to cook eggs but I found the right combination of heat and cooking time and I think I've got it licked.

After we got home, Peepaw popped some popcorn the old fashioned way and we poured butter all over it and watched Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - the musical with David Hasselhoff. I know it sounds weird considering who starred in it but it was actually very good. It was a nice end to the day and the popcorn tasted just like movie popcorn.

We had a nice but short visit with our friend, Doug. He stopped here Wed. night on his way to the D.C. area to start a new job. It was nice to see him and he loved it here. We sat outside until pretty late and at one point, Peepaw and I heard this very weird noise. It sounded like a shrill ghost whistle and it got closer to the edge of the woods and then another one answered it down the valley. Then we heard it go back up into the woods and shortly after that, a regular owl hooted. We were thinking (and hoping!) that it was some kind of a weird owl or bird. I don't think it was a four legged animal because we couldn't hear any rustling in the leaves. Sadly, though, Doug couldn't hear it at all because he's partially deaf. Oh, on that same note (Jason, you'll get a kick out of this), Doug decided he was going to pet Butters. So he started rubbing down her back rather vigorously and she promptly started in with that real low growl and bless his heart, he couldn't hear her. So Peepaw jumped in and told Doug that he really might really want to stop. I think we saved him from having a bad memory at Possum Cough.

I will leave you now with all my love. All of you hug and kiss each other for us, okay?

Mom